What’s worse than spending a night in jail? Apparently, dealing with a chronically slow computer.

According to a recent study commissioned by Slimware Utilities Holdings Inc., which was conducted online by Harris Poll, Americans have a tendency to procrastinate when it comes to the upkeep of their digital devices, yet still expect these devices to perform at their best every time.

Some of the findings of the report include:

• Nearly 1 in 10 Americans would rather spend the night in jail than combat a chronically slow computer. Some would rather clean out a dirty cat litter box (31 percent), run a marathon (15 percent), or even take/retake the SATs (12 percent), than deal with a slow computer.
• More than half of Americans who own a computer (58 percent) require at least one prompt before they run an update and 10 percent update their computers after a whopping 10 prompts or more.
• Eighty-nine percent of computer owners wait to be prompted before they upgrade their computer’s software, while 87 percent of smartphone owners wait to be prompted to update their software as well.
• Procrastinating on updates may already sound bad, but there are those who never update their devices. Five percent of computer owners, seven percent of smartphone owners, and eight percent of tablet owners, never update their respective devices.

“While consumers understand the need for updating devices, our survey found that 1 out of every 10 computer owners hit ‘ignore’ or ‘remind me later’ at least 10 times before allowing their computer to update,” said Bob Bryant, CTO of Slimware Utilities. “There is a digital disconnect with consumers who expect their device to be running at top speed at all times, but don’t take the time to do what’s necessary for upkeep.”

The “Consumer Digital Device Upkeep, Sentiments and Habits Survey” was conducted online by Harris Poll on behalf of Slimware Utilities from April 7-11, 2016 among 2,157 U.S. adults age 18 and older. Further results include:

Procrastination nation – why wait?

Procrastinating with the upkeep of software devices has consequences, but it’s no surprise that those who put software update in the backseat often wait until it’s too late before they do anything about it. According to the survey, nearly 1 in 10 of computer owners who hesitate to upgrade their software say they wait until their device is no longer functioning properly for a number of reasons, such as it takes too long (47 percent), they are afraid that the update will make their device worse (27 percent), or they are afraid to lose their files (22 percent).

When it hits the fan

So what do these procrastinators do when their device is almosts at death’s door? Four percent still do absolutely nothing, 58 percent just keep restarting their devices in the hopes that it would somehow get better, 53 percent check for viruses, 43 percent resort to deleting files, 36 percent use a computer program to fix the problem, and 9 percent turn to professionals to fix their problem.

Digital delusions or reality check?

The survey also finds some of the respondents a bit delusional, since 10 percent stated that they have no plans of replacing their computers any time soon, but do not want to deal with the software upkeeps needed for them to run smoothly.

But are people really just procrastinating because they are lazy or do their fears make sense?

Let’s look at mobile devices, specifically Android-based devices. If you are not aware, not all Android devices get software updates when new versions come out. This is because of a number of factors such as the software update is only available for specific devices, or service providers and manufacturers have yet to push the update to its users, unlike what Apple does. So even if consumers want to update their software, if the update is not available or compatible, then what are consumers to do?

For those who fear updating their devices will make things worse, these fears aren’t warrantless, just ask iOS users. Over the years, some iOS users have experienced getting their devices bricked, apps crashing, became vulnerable to hacks, devices run slower, and battery draining fast, to name a few.

It’s easy to say people simply can’t be bothered with the upkeep of their digital devices, but when updates are not available or have known to cause issues, who’s really to blame for a device’s early death?

photo credit: Let’s make some noise via photopin (license)